Board Approves Plans for NAEP Civics Tests

Capping a year of work, the National Assessment Governing Board last
week approved the blueprint for a new national test of what students
know about civics and government.

At a quarterly meeting here, the board adopted the framework and
test specifications that will be used to write the new National
Assessment of Educational Progress test in civics. The assessment is to
be given to 4th, 8th, and 12th graders in 1998, after a field test next
year.

NAEP, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Education, is
the only ongoing national measure of student knowledge in a variety of
academic subjects. The congressionally mandated tests have been given
to a sampling of K-12 students since 1969.

An assessment in civics was last given in 1988. The governing board,
which sets policy for NAEP, ordered a new test in light of changes in
the field and the 1994 publication of voluntary national standards for
civic education.

The results of the new civics assessment will not be comparable with
those of the 1988 test. But to offer a limited look at trends,
officials plan to conduct a separate and smaller test in 1998 using
some of the 1988 test items.

Based on Standards

Officials said the new NAEP civics framework is based heavily on the
well-received national standards. (See Education Week, Nov. 23,
1994.)

The Center for Civic Education in Calabasas, Calif., which drafted
the civics standards, oversaw the creation of the testing framework
along with the Washington-based Council of Chief State School Officers
and the Palo Alto, Calif.-based American Institutes for Research.

Those organizations assembled a drafting committee that included
teachers, curriculum specialists, teacher-educators, assessment
experts, and others. Overall, more than 500 people had input through
formal reviews, public hearings, and student forums.

The framework expects students to demonstrate a variety of skills
and knowledge, such as understanding the U.S. Constitution, being able
to take and defend a position on a public issue, and recognizing the
"traits of private and public character essential to the preservation
and improvement of American constitutional democracy." (See box, this
page.)

The framework calls for test items to be based on a variety of
materials, such as quotations, political cartoons, or sample ballots.
Sixty percent of test time is to be spent on multiple-choice items,
with the other 40 percent devoted to open-ended items that ask the
student to write either a short answer or a longer response.

Over five years, the civics assessment is expected to cost $8.7
million, compared with $10.1 million over five years for the national
assessment in U.S. history.

The governing board directed test writers to cover "civil society,"
or the nongovernmental aspects of citizenship, in the assessment. The
board also called for a preface to the public edition of the framework
emphasizing the importance of that subject, which has drawn renewed
interest of late from political thinkers and writers.

Board members also directed that the test specifications, a separate
document, be released.

Design Plan Reworked

In other business, board members discussed a revised set of draft
recommendations for the redesign of NAEP, which is to take effect in
2000. (See Education Week, Jan. 24, 1996.)

Since the last board meeting in January, the draft has been reworked
to focus less on dictating specifics. While board members had earlier
suggested that NAEP be given every year at both the national and state
levels, the revised plan calls for state assessments to be conducted
every two years.

The plan also backs away from outlining which subjects should be
tested when, saying only that of the subject areas in which NAEP tests,
the assessments in reading, writing, mathematics, and science "will be
given priority." Recommendations about the number of test questions and
the length of time of the test have been deleted.

Final board action on the plan is expected in August.

Last week, board members also expressed serious misgivings about an
outside evaluation of NAEP now in the works, and agreed to send a
letter to Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley. The Education
Department has awarded, without competition, a contract to the National
Academy of Sciences for a three-year, $2 million study. Board members
say the effort, funded from the NAEP budget, is too costly.

A NAGB committee report argues that the evaluation "is likely to
study many of the wrong things, asking many of the wrong questions, and
... will result in a report in 1998, too late to be useful."

Board members were especially sensitive to budgetary limits because
its executive committee had just finished a session in which it set
priorities at the request of the Education Department.

Fiscal 1996 budget bills pending in the House and Senate would
provide $32.6 million for NAEP, while the Education Department had
requested $38 million. (See story, page 25.)

The executive committee put the highest priority on increasing the
number of grade levels to be tested at the state level in 1998,
producing test items for the 1998 writing assessment consistent with
new test specifications, and conducting a field test of the 12th-grade
arts assessment.

The panel dropped its support of a pilot test of a computerized
version of NAEP and of a 1998 study of whether items from the separate
reading and writing tests could do double duty.

Copies of the civics framework are available from the National
Assessment Governing Board, 800 North Capitol St. N.W., Suite 825,
Washington, D.C. 20002. It is expected to be available on the Internet
this spring.

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